4 Answers
4

This feature is implemented as autocommand. It is set up in /etc/vimrc - see snippet below. Remove it from there or add command to remove that autocommand to your vimrc file. (I am using fedora - on rhel it should be very similar)

This is more of a comment than a real answer. Solaris is not a Linux distro. It is a version of Unix operating system. vi on RedHat which is a Linux distro (Linux != Unix) is symbolically linked to vim. Solaris vi refers to genuine vi editor created by Bill Joy. So we are not talking here about the same editors. I have no idea how vim behaves as I am using nvi on my OpenBSD box which is another clone of genuine vi. I would suggest that you install vi editor on your RedHat box first and try to reproduce the problem. Typing vi filename.txt
should open the file and put the prompt at the begging of the first line. Typing vi + filename.txt should open file in the last line. However vi can be open with many other options like vi +n filename.txt which puts you at the beginning of n-th line or vi +/regexp filename.txt which puts you at the beginning of the line which contains first occurrence of the regular expression (regexp), view filename.txt read only mode. Please refer to the man pages for the complete list. Do not forget to unlink vi command from vim when you install a real vi.

To make sure, that this function is added by a plugin try to open the file with

vim --noplugin <filename>

If the cursor doesn't jump to the position of the last edit you should open the file again without the --noplugin-switch and study the output of :scriptnames. :scriptnames lists all previously sourced scripts.

If you are a semi-experienced vim user you can exclude most of the scripts by means of the path. For instance, all scripts located under &rtp/{ftplugin,spell,colors,syntax} (&rtp := runtimepath) are out of question.

I can imagine, that the script which implements this feature has a related name.